The lasting legacies of your help (From Oxford Mail)

The lasting legacies of your help

9:11am Monday 27th November 2006 in Editorial Comment

Oxford Mail readers are a charitable lot.

When a cause captures their imagination, there seems to be no limit to their generosity.

The near-complete Oxford Children's Hospital will be a lasting tribute to this.

But so is the progress of little Gulshat Kadyrova.

Her determined mum Bahar sold almost all their possessions to bring her daughter from their Turkmenistan home to Oxford for an operation to put right a crippling hip condition.

With the help of our readers, she was able to fund the surgery at the Nuffield Orthopaedic Centre in Oxford.

Now a child who could barely walk is taking dance classes.

Another operation is needed soon and already the community is rallying round to organise fundraising events.

Gulshat's story has a universal appeal: a loving mum stopping at nothing for the wellbeing of her daughter, and daring to trust in the goodwill of others to accept and support.

It's a big world out there - but Bahar and Gulshat know that it's not only our city's surgeons who are among the best in the world.

Our people are too.